


Love Is(n't) All You Need

by autumnalmanac



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 20:51:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autumnalmanac/pseuds/autumnalmanac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a few canon-compliant drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Is(n't) All You Need

I.)  
Finnick Odair loves Annie Cresta more than life itself. At this particular moment, however, she does not love him back.  
“I told you, sweetheart. I had a very important meeting in Two.”  
“And was this very important meeting with a woman?” Annie can’t disguise the venom in her voice.  
“Yes,” Finnick replies calmly. Yes, but the men like me, too.  
“I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Finn.”  
Finnick’s shoulders slump in resignation. “Annie, you have to understand—“  
“Understand what? Understand that you fuck anything that moves? Understand that you’re turning into one of them as we speak?”  
Finnick can’t take it anymore. He knows the risk—knows that he’s taking their very lives in his hands—but God, he’s so sick of the lies. He’s sick of her barely-concealed disgust and her contemptuous glances. He’s so sick of it all.  
She has to know.  
He seizes her by the wrist and leads her toward the back door.  
“What the hell?” she snaps, struggling against his grasp.  
“You’ll see.”  
He almost stops when they get to the beach, but even that’s not safe anymore. Instead, he helps her up onto the jetty, which juts almost half a mile out into the wild green sea. (Green like your eyes, Finn, his mother used to say. Green like your eyes, Finn, Annie used to say.) They walk until they can go no further, Annie protesting with every step. There, amid the screeching gulls and crashing surf—there at the end of the world-- he whispers the truth into her ear.  
Some of her hair flies into his mouth as she throws her arms around him. She’s crying and he’s crying and she’s mumbling something that sounds like sorry, so sorry, Finn.  
“Don’t be sorry.” The words come out more harshly than he had intended. “Never be sorry. This is not your fault, do you understand me?”  
She manages to nod. They cry some more (because really, who could blame them?). Then, when they’re both thoroughly exhausted, they perch on the edge of the jetty and watch the sun sink below the horizon.  
II.)  
Madge Undersee doesn’t love Gale Hawthorne. When she looks at him, she sees mine explosions and starving children and a ramshackle hut at the edge of the Seam. When pretty, prim Madge Undersee looks at dark, rugged Gale Hawthorne, she sees nothing but tessarae and misery.  
Some things are more important than a chiseled jaw or strong shoulders.

III.) Delly Cartwright has always loved Peeta Mellark. When they were very small, they played in the Meadow with his brothers, who were much bigger and rougher. Whenever the older Mellark boys knocked Delly over (which was often), Peeta would always rush to her aid.  
One day, while she was nursing a particularly nasty skinned knee, Peeta picked a handful of dandelions and wove them into something resembling a crown.  
“Here,” he said, resting the coronet atop her blond curls. “Now you’re a princess, and princesses don’t cry.” Pwincesses don’t cwy.  
She’s still not entirely sure what a princess is; Panem knows where Peeta learned such a thing. But whenever she’s tempted to let the tears come, she remembers that sunny golden crown and reminds herself that "pwincesses don’t cwy".

III.) Clove doesn’t love anything but her knives.  
They will never leave her. They will never abandon her. And in the end, they will transform her from a tribute into a Victor.  
(She already has one in mind for Cato. It’s a beauty, too, with its cheerful cherry wood and gleaming serrated smile. She hopes he can appreciate the gesture.)

 

IV.) Glimmer loves her interview dress. She loves the way it clings and sparkles, revealing just enough of the satiny skin underneath. (She also loves her poison-spike ring—a present from Cashmere—but that’s a secret for the arena.)

 

V.) Cato loves the arena. The trees, the lake, the sparkling Cornucopia—it’s just the way he always imagined it. (Later, as the mutts advance on him, he’s still struck by the beauty of it all.)


End file.
